


Forever Person

by callmeautumn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anti-Semitic Character, Anti-Semitic Slur, Antisemitism, Aromantic Bucky Barnes, Aromantic Characters written by an Aromantic Author, Aromantic Steve Rogers, Asexual Bucky Barnes, Asexual Characters Written by an Asexual Person, Asexual Steve Rogers, Implied Aromantic Sam Wilson, Implied Asexual Sam Wilson, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Acephobia, Internalized Arophobia, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Queerplatonic Partners, Queerplatonic relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24599707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeautumn/pseuds/callmeautumn
Summary: The five times Steve and Bucky are queerplatonic partners by accident, plus one time they're queerplatonic partners on purpose.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 12
Kudos: 138





	Forever Person

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Forever Person](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29074932) by [WTF Infinity Starbucks 2021 (InfinityStucky)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinityStucky/pseuds/WTF%20Infinity%20Starbucks%202021)



> MASSIVE TW: a character uses the slur “k*ke” in the first section. I didn’t tag it the first time I posted this and somebody got hurt. I’m so disappointed in myself. I vow to do better. 
> 
> There isn't enough aro-ace content for these two. I saw the opportunity and I took it!

**A Bar in Brooklyn, 1943**

Steve scans the crowd, impatiently waiting for Bucky to return with their drinks. The bar is loud and hazy with smoke which isn’t messing with Steve’s lungs yet but certainly _will_ and Steve would rather be a beer in when it happens. 

Someone taps Steve’s shoulder. He turns to see a fairy, eyes wide and framed with done-up lashes. He’s taller than Steve, but the stool makes up their difference in size. His mouth is a garish shade of red that makes his skin look a bit waxy in the low light. Rouge pinks his cheeks in an exaggerated fashion, so different from the flush of exertion or heat that Steve is used to seeing on a man. He wears a scarf around his neck, the pattern - red polka dots - faded with age. 

Before Steve can say anything he sees Bucky break through the line of crowded bodies over the fairy’s shoulder. He looks like heaven on earth: pressed brown trousers with a perfect crease down the front like Steve’s Ma taught him how to do; a white short-sleeve button down, the two top buttons undone; old leather suspenders holding the outfit together. His hair is tousled, and he has the barest bit of stubble growing in, and Steve is stupidly glad he’s already sitting so he can’t do something foolish like swoon. 

Bucky and the fairy catch sight of one another at the same time. Bucky pauses for a split second, just long enough to get knocked into by a girl getting swung around by her dame. Beer sloshes over his knuckles. 

“Whaddya want, Alan?” Bucky demands, slamming the drinks on the table. Beer sloshes over his knuckles again. He doesn’t flick it off. 

The fairy - Alan, apparently - has lost all his false humour and charm.His face flushes in purple-red splotches beneath the rouge, lips twisted into a garish red pucker. His hand, once soft on Steve’s shoulder, has become a set of talons on his arm. Steve tries to subtly retrieve his arm. When a gentle tug doesn’t work he yanks harder. Alan is rocked by the motion before he snaps back to his senses and pulls away like Steve’s arm disgusts him. Bucky silently moves closer, angles his body so he can wrap an arm around Steve’s shoulders. His thumb strokes Steve’s collar bone in apology. 

“You oughta know something,” Alan snarls to Steve, “about this asshole: he’s _usin’_ you. He ain’t a real queer--” 

“You shut your whore mouth,” Bucky begins. 

“Oh, _I’m_ a whore? How ‘bout y' make sure you can get it up before y’ go askin’ f’r blows.” 

“I paid y’, so what does it matter? Y’ got your money.” 

Alan smiles nastily. “Yeah, money _is_ all your kind would care about. Well I got news for you: ain’t enough money in the world t’ make me wanna suck you off again. I tried to help you fix yourself, but y'r just a defective _kike_.” Alan spits at Bucky’s eye and storms away, pushing dancers roughly to move across the room. 

Bucky snarls and grabs Steve’s hand tightly in his own. 

“Let’s go,” he mutters darkly. Steve reaches up a hand, tries to wipe away the spit. Bucky grabs his wrist harshly, small bones grinding in his strong fingers. “I said, _let’s go_. Grab your shit.” 

The cold air against his skin is a nasty shock. When he flinches, Bucky mutters a cuss and strips out of his own jacket to lay it over Steve’s shoulders. Steve tries to protest, but Bucky’s scowl dissuades him. The silence between them is strained and painful. Bucky’s anger is now aimed at the pavement, but no less fierce. Hesitant, Steve reaches out to brush Bucky’s arm. The fierce, pinched expression barely softens when Bucky turns to him. 

“I get it, y’know? Y’ ain’t queer… like that.” Steve swallows against the shock of tears that well up. _This ain’t about you_ , Steve tells himself fiercely. 

Bucky growls, raking a hand through his hair roughly. “That ain’t it, Stevie, I just-- I’m not-- I don’t know--” He cuts himself off with a sigh heavier than Atlas’s. After a long pause he shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair again. “Nevermind.” 

That night, Bucky curls closer than usual, his face buried in Steve’s hair, arms and legs so tight it’s nearly suffocating. 

“Y’know it's just you, right?” 

“Huh?” 

Bucky sighs, his breath hot against Steve’s scalp. “Y’know it’s just you for me. Y’re mine, and ‘m yours, and ain’t no one else. Ain’t no dames, or fairies, or nothin’, just you ‘nd me.” 

Steve clears his throat and blinks rapidly, unseeingly in the dark. He tucks his hurt deep in his chest, tries to believe he doesn’t feel it. It dulls to match the usual tightness in his chest when he thinks of Bucky. “Yeah,” he whispers. “O’course.” 

**A Storage Facility, Somewhere in Europe, 1944**

Peggy’s perfume is sweet and flowery. It makes Steve’s nose itch, despite no longer being allergic to most flora. This, of all things, is the first thing Steve registers. The next is how insistently her lips press to his, her breasts against his chest, her body against his. Awkwardly, he brings his hands to rest on her hips. His lips still clearly have not gotten the memo that he is currently being kissed. Mechanically, he forces them to mimic hers. 

She pulls away. Steve holds back a sigh of relief by sheer will alone. 

“You seem tense.” 

Steve thinks she’s aiming for sultry. Privately, he thinks she missed. He also doesn’t think that’s the sort of thing you say to an otherwise alright dame. 

Howard appears around a crate, poking his head out with a devilish, knowing grin. “I hate to break up two lovebirds,” he leers, “but we’ve got to get moving if we’re gonna make it to your little friends.” 

At the mention of Bucky, tangential as it is, Steve straightens and shoves Peggy away as gently as he can. His chest throbs in longing and apprehension, right behind his sternum, like his heart might jump out of his chest to pursue Bucky on its own. 

Days later Peggy finds Steve in a bar. He’s got an arm slung around Bucky’s shoulder, leaning in to listen to a story he’s telling. Her dress is a beautiful red. He doesn’t compliment her. 

Steve goes through the motions of introducing them, cataloguing the tightness of Bucky’s smile. Peggy is perfectly polite, charming even, but she doesn’t stick around. Her smile, when she leaves, is sad, wistful, and above all knowing. 

Steve shakes his head and tosses his arm back across Bucky’s shoulder. 

“She someone important?” 

Had anyone else asked, Steve might have said yes, and regaled them with tales of Peggy’s prowess. But this wasn’t anyone. This was Bucky. 

“Nah,” he says. “Ain’t nobody to worry about.” 

Steve wills himself to remember the soft, secret smile Bucky gives him, and the way the tightness in his chest eases some; just enough to let him forget all the confusion and guilt that lives between them. 

**Around a fire in the Alpines, 1944**

Steve is numb. He is beyond numb. He doesn’t know how to feel. Dugan passes him a beer. He sips it, never moving his eyes from the fire burning in front of him. Gabe sits lightly beside him on the log. Out of the darkness, the entire team emerges to sit around the small fire with him. 

“We’re sorry,” Gabe says quietly. 

“We know he was your, uh… he was your fella,” Morita adds from across the fire. 

“He will be missed,” Happy announces. 

Steve is tired of crying. He is tired of crying, tired of falling asleep without Bucky wrapped around him, tired of wondering what they hell they were. He chugs his beer, drops the bottle in the snow, and abandons the crowded loneliness of the fire for the solitary loneliness of his tent. His chest is throbbing and now there won’t be any relief. He’ll just have to live the rest of his life with this ache in his chest for a deadman he loved but couldn’t love properly, and who could never seem to love him right either. 

Two weeks later, he drives his plane into the ice. 

**In front of the TV, 2016**

Steve buries his face into Bucky’s hair. It’s lost the scent of the clove cigarettes he smoked like a chimney all those years ago, but the cologne he’s wearing is remarkably similar to whatever he wore in the '30s. 

“Stop sniffin’ me,” Bucky laughs. “I’m tryna watch a movie.” 

Steve laughs along, mostly because he’s riding the same deliriously happy high he’s been on for the last eleven months. Bucky is home; home, and here, and declared innocent. Yes, things are different. But they’re also so achingly the same it makes his head spin. They fall silent, watching Moana in easy companionship. Of all the Disney movies they’ve discovered, this is by far their favourite. 

The door gives a brief click of warning before Tony Stark, complete with suit and sunglasses at 2pm, comes strolling in. Bucky barely flinches. Steve rewards him with a gentle scratch to the crown of his head. 

“Ah, the lovebirds themselves,” Tony hums. Though he couldn’t possibly know it -- and Steve certainly won’t be the one to tell him -- he is so similar to Howard that Steve tenses with time-space vertigo. Bucky’s palm on his knee is heavy and grounding beneath the blanket. 

Without invitation, Tony plops down on the armchair closest to them. 

Bucky snorts. “Go right ahead, Tony,” he says dryly. “No need to be shy. Make yourself right at home; not like we were in the middle of anything.” 

Rather than scaring Tony away, as Bucky had undoubtedly hoped, he leans in closer. Tipping his face to leer at them over his sunglasses, he waggles his eyebrows at them. “Getting up to a little midday refresher, I see.” 

Steve doesn’t bother hiding his grimace. “You say such awful things.” 

Tony bridles in faux hurt, hand on his chest, mouth stretched in a comically wide ‘O’. “I’m wounded on our dearest Robo-Cop’s behalf.” 

“Don’t be,” Bucky snorts. 

Tony, being Tony, cannot watch Moana’s journey for too long without breaking the peaceful atmosphere. 

“Soooo,” he begins. Bucky sighs heavily. Steve muffles his snort in Bucky’s hair. 

“The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage,” Tony finally blurts. 

“Yeah,” Buck agrees, “last year.” 

Tony hums his agreement, but says nothing. Steve bites back a sigh of irritation. Whether you think he’s 99 or 29, he’s truly getting too old for this beating around the bush bullshit. “What of it, Tony.” 

Tony holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Oh, nothing, nothing. Just wondering when you two are gonna tie the knot is all. We've got running bets on it, and I'm pretty interested in collecting this cash, so if you two could hurry it along and do what we all know you've been waiting to do, that'd be _great._ ” 

Bucky tightens like a spring. “You should leave.” His voice is flat, the syntax unable to disguise the order. 

Tony, ever unable to stop himself crossing the line, leans in with unrestrained delight. “Ooooooh,” he hums. “This smells like drama. Did Capsicle turn you down? Or was Robo-Cop the one who insisted you return the ring?” 

Bucky’s snarl is vicious as he lunges halfway to standing. Steve lunges with him, grabbing him around the waist to stop him from killing Tony Stark. Instinct seems to be the only thing that makes Tony Stark rear back. He grins in delight. 

“Tony,” Steve warns. “You’ve overstayed your welcome.” 

Tony puts his hands up in surrender again. “Alright, alright. I know when I’m not wanted.” 

“Do you?” Bucky snaps. 

Tony giggles as he makes his escape through the front door. The moment he’s gone, Bucky is breaking Steve’s hold to storm into their room. Though Steve winces at the slam of the door, he doesn’t follow. 

Steve coaxes him out of his sulk with steak and sweet potatoes. After they’ve cleared away the dishes and settled onto the couch to watch _Night on Earth_ , Bucky crawls his way into Steve’s arms. Steve accepts the bundle of super assassin with little complaint. Bucky’s breath is warm and damp on his neck, and brings him back to another insinuation, another strop, another apology in a lifetime so different from this one. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky finally says. 

“For what?” 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Bucky admits. He ducks his head, so his breath falls down the collar of Steve’s shirt instead. “I just--” 

“Hey,” Steve interrupts. “You really think you gotta explain anything to me? After all we been through?” He squeezes Bucky gently. “Besides, I ain’t so keen on us gettin’ married no way.” 

The unmasked hope in Bucky’s eyes nearly breaks Steve’s heart. “No?”

“No.” 

They lay there til the sun returns to the sky, breathing in each other’s ears, safe in each other’s arms. 

**Cuddled in bed, 2018**

Steve wakes to Bucky frowning at his cellphone. It wouldn’t be particularly confusing if it weren’t-- Steve twists to check their bedside clock-- 2am. He grunts, still half asleep, and wiggles until he’s comfortably pillowed on Bucky’s… everything. 

“Why’re y’ up?” 

Bucky runs an absent hand through Steve’s hair. “People.” 

“Wh’type o’ people?”

“Paparazzi.” 

Steve flails his hand around until he finds the phone, then unceremoniously chucks it across the room. “Pap’razzi later. Sleep now.” 

Later comes at the breakfast table. Steve sets down a heaping plate of eggs, bacon, and grits for Bucky, and a few slices of bacon for Natasha to nibble on. 

“Thank you, baby,” Bucky mutters, eyes locked on his screen. 

Steve plucks the device out of his hands. 

“It’s later,” Bucky immediately protests. 

“No phones at the breakfast table.”

“Since when!” 

“Since you developed an addiction to your damn phone at 2am.” 

“Why are you addicted to your phone all of a sudden?” Natasha’s voice clocks in somewhere between bored and teasing. Steve is immediately on his guard. 

Bucky turns his sullen glare onto his food, face becoming more complicated as he settles into silence. Steve knows the look immediately, tenses up another notch. _Time for damage control, then._

“Some stupid paps,” Steve offers. “It’s nothin’.” 

If Natasha’s face is any indication, she doesn’t plan on letting it go so easily. She says something long and complicated-sounding to Bucky in Russian. He fires immediately, practically snarling. 

Though Steve doesn’t speak more than five words in Russian, he speaks Bucky fluently. He would know that guilty, frustrated look anywhere. “Hey,” he cuts in English. “Maybe we just eat breakfast and leave it be.” 

Bucky digs into the food with a vengeance entirely unsuited for their sunny breakfast nook. Natasha, unusually subdued, nibbles on a piece of bacon. 

Steve sighs heavily, and forces himself to eat his food calmly. 

Less than an hour later, Steve finds out that thanks to an objectively awful photo of them holding hands at a supermarket, he and Bucky are the internet’s most popular gay couple. Steve feels his stomach drop into his heels. They’ve both got ways to cope with stress: Bucky goes to brood in the firearms range; Steve calls Sam. 

“Hey! So, ah-- Can I ask some advice?” 

“Hello, friend I haven’t spoken to in months! I’m doing well, thank you for asking! Yeah, my mom’s doin’ alright - cancer hasn’t gotten her yet! Oh, sure, I got some free time and emotional labor. I can listen to your problems and offer advice!” 

Steve winces. “Ah, Sam, I’m sorry.” 

Sam’s laugh is a balm to his nerves. “Don’t worry about it, man. Whatcha need?”

Steve finds himself parked on the couch, spilling his guts to a man halfway down the coast. He knows he’s barely half-coheren but he needs to get it off his chest: what he feels for Bucky, which is deeper in some ways but fundamentally the same as his feelings for all his friends; how he feels guilty for not wanting to have sex with Bucky, and actually being nauseated by the thought; his guilt for holding Bucky back when he could be having full relationships with someone else; how he would even be ammenable to having someone else join them in their apartment if Bucky wanted something more with someone else, and all his guilt and confusion around that. 

Sam is silent for a long while - so long that Steve isn’t even sure that he’s still on the line. 

“Oh, yeah, I’m here. I’m just trying not to laugh at you.” 

Steve immediately stiffens. “Laugh at me?” 

“You just take yourself so damn seriously sometimes. Unclench, Captain Rogers, _Jesus_ ; gonna get stuck that way.” 

“I just want you to know that this has been awful advice so far.” 

Sam laughs, and Steve can’t help but laugh along with him. 

“Alright, alright, so what’s the verdict, Doc Wilson?” 

“Do you know what asexual and aromantic mean? As they relate to humans, smart ass.” 

Thus comes the most illuminating thirty minutes of Steven Grant Rogers’s life. 

“Long story short,” Sam finishes. “Unclench, open that All-American mouth, and _talk to Bucky_. Welcome to the club, I’ll send y’all some enamel pins next time the VA deigns to send me a paycheck.” 

“Wait, you’re-- you’re like me-- us, too??” 

“Goodbye, Rogers!” 

Steve pulls back the phone to see the black screen flicker back to his home screen - a selfie Bucky took in the golden afternoon glow of the tower windows. He summons all the courage he’s never had. 

“JARVIS?” 

“Yes, Captain?”

“Could you please call Bucky up from the firearms range?” 

“Certainly, sir.” 

**Plus One**

Bucky looks like a caged animal when Steve finally stops speaking. His shoulders are up by his ears as he paces the length of the wall. 

“So lemme get this straight: y’ don’ wanna fuck and y’ don’ wanna-- y’ _can’t_ fall in love.” 

Steve licks his lips. His chest is throbbing with a vengeance. “I mean, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but roughly… yes.” 

Bucky finally comes to a stand still. “But y’ don’ wanna stop wha’ we got here?” 

“Right,” Steve rushes to confirm. “Yes, I like what we’ve got, I just-- uhm-- I found this form? Online? Well Sam sent it to me, actually-- and, uhm, it’s sorta juvenile but I thought it would be helpful? Maybe, uhm--” 

He thrusts the flimsy paper forward for Bucky’s perusal. 

“I don’t really know why it’s green,” he babbles as Bucky’s eyes rake over it. 

His breath slams to a halt in his chest as Bucky storms out of the room. Moments later, Bucky storms back in, this time with pens gripped in his hand. 

He sits heavily on the floor, but places the form on the coffee table with a bizarre reverence. Carefully, he fills out the form in blue ink, marking x’s and o’s in their appropriate places. Steve dutifully looks anywhere but the form. 

Then he cranes his neck to look at Steve. “Your turn,” he says simply. When Steve slips down to sit next to him, Bucky passes over a red pen. 

Steve takes a fortifying breath and begins working his way down the page. 

_Currently we are THIS close physically_. Bucky has marked an x all the way at the right side of the line, where the two drawn figures (who eerily resemble them) are cuddled blissfully together. Steve carefully traces over Bucky’s x with one of his own. 

_I’d like us to be THIS close in the future_. A blue ‘o’ circles their shared x. Steve retraces the circle. He peeks briefly at Bucky, who is watching the pen with rapt attention. When Bucky finally glances at his face, Steve offers a small smile. Bucky flashes a nervous one back. 

_I’d like us to do these things_. Bucky has circled: ‘go out together’, ‘hug’, ‘hold hands’, ‘nap together’, and circled ‘small kisses’ several times over with small exclamation points. In a dotted circle, Bucky had carefully noted ‘have sex’ and ‘big kisses’, a small question mark beside each circle. 

The urge to ask him what those notations mean is nearly overwhelming. Instead, he circles all the items firmly agreed to, and writes in “sleep in the same bed” to circle for good measure. Bucky huffs a small laugh beside him. They share a small smile before Steve goes back to the form. 

_I don’t really want to do these things_. Steve’s pen twitches towards the dotted-circle items tellingly before he pulls it back. Bucky, observant as ever, bumps shoulders with him. 

“Y’ain’ gotta lie. Not on my account.” 

With a fortifying breath, Steve nods and crosses out ‘have sex’ and ‘big kisses’ in broad, careful lines. 

“Sorry,” he whispers. He feels stupidly guilty. “I feel stupidly guilty.” 

Bucky tuts in disapproval. “Ain’ nothin’ t’be guilty for, Stevie. Y’ don’ wan’ it, y’ don’ wan’ it. ‘S no big deal.” 

“Yeah, but you circled it!” 

He shrugs. “Sure. But to be real honest with ya, I ain’t too keen on anyone touchin’ me below the belt anyways. It’s a great _idea_ , but the actual touchin’ of the bits ain’ nothin t’ write home about.” 

This, of all things, startles a snorting laugh out of Steve. He tries to clamp down on his mirth, but before he knows it the two of them are keeling over, laughing like two goons. 

“The actual touching of the bits,” Steve chokes out. 

Bucky wipes away the tears streaming down his cheeks. 

“I don’t know how else to put it,” he defends. “Don’t matter if it's a dame, or a fella, or _anyone_ \-- touchin’ bits just ain’t all that it’s hyped up t’be.” 

“Well,” Steve says. “I think we’ve come to the conclusion that there won’t be touching of the bits in this household, so that’s all fine.” 

_I’d like to call you my_ _____. _I’d like to be your ___._ The last questions on the page. Steve traces the blue ink carefully with his finger, mouthing the words in the sudden silence before finally working up some nerve. Steve doesn’t think his chest has ever been tighter. 

“Forever person,” Steve reads softly. 

Bucky shrugs. “Yeah,” he says hesitantly. “My forever person.” 

“And you’d like to be _my_ forever person,” he verifies, looking at the line below. 

Bucky nods, swallowing thickly. “If you’ll have me, o’course.” 

Steve licks his lips nervously, and turns to look at Bucky. His eyes are suddenly so close, and so, _so_ grey. It’s Steve’s turn to swallow thickly as he leans in. 

Their foreheads connect, and Bucky closes his eyes briefly before they open wide again. Steve tries to speak but all that emerges is a croak. He clears his throat, tries again. 

“May I kiss you?” 

Bucky nods, then clears his own throat quietly. “Do your worst.” 

Steve laughs, and so does Bucky, and their lips are brushing one another’s in the sweetest and softest caress. They pull away at the same time. Steve's chest opens, blooms, unfurls for the first time in his life. Looking into Bucky's eyes is like looking into the sun but he can't look away, not now, maybe not ever again.

“Thank you,” Steve sighs. 

“Ain’t nothin’ y’ gotta thank me for,” Bucky murmurs. “Not when the sweetest fella in the world is my forever person.” 

Steve’s cheeks hurt with how much he’s grinning, and he’s got no plans of stopping. 


End file.
